Trompe L'Oeil
by angela evans
Summary: He’s living a peaceful lie, and so he does not notice when it all begins to unravel. The Telling


**Trompe L'Oeil**  
  
**Author:** Angela Evans  
**Email:** angel33296@aol.com  
**Feedback:** Always welcome.   
**Distribution:** The golden rule: ask me please. FF.net, CM, SD-1 okay.   
**Rating:** R  
**Summary:** He's living a peaceful lie, and so he does not notice when it all begins to unravel.   
**Spoilers:** "The Telling"   
**Disclaimer:** I do not own them. However, my birthday is in December if someone wants to get me MV as a present.   
**Classification:** Extreme AU...the way things should never be.   
**Author's Note:** This was inspired by Agent Otter's awesome "Relief". I humbly submit my work as tribute.   
**Thanks:** Jasmine, for the help and for coding it.   
  
  
"It's not really her, is it?"   
  
"No. But he believes it enough to make it be her."   
  
@@@  
  
He watches her sleep, longing to brush her silken hair away from her face, the face he's seen only in his dreams for the last two years. He's close enough to feel her hot breath on his cheek as her chest rises and falls with each inhalation and exhalation. His eyes drink in her still form and he notes that she's thinner; he can almost see her ribs.   
  
He shouldn't be here. Not in this bed, not in this hotel room with her. He knows they're on borrowed time. Tomorrow they'll return to the world of the living. She'll still be unattainable; he'll still be married.   
  
He drifts off and she smiles secretly to herself, knowing he'd been watching her.   
  
@@@  
  
He's not the type of man to do this, but he finds himself being unfaithful. Thoughts, daydreams all leading to actions. Actions that speak louder than thousands of words. He's not sure just when the transition occurred, but when he wakes up to his new reality, he's buried himself deep within her.   
  
She moans softly as their bodies rock together, her breath shuttering and hot against his chest. His hands trace down her back, over her hips and thighs. Fingertips find scars that he doesn't know the meaning of, tiny imperfections that he has no history with. He's reading her body all over again, memorizing this new, revised edition of her.   
  
@@@  
  
He's living a peaceful lie, and so he does not notice when it all begins to unravel.   
  
There is one day when he becomes aware of the lie, but only in the furthest most reaches of consciousness. That day he discovers something that is not in the Book of Sydney: a small heart shaped birthmark in the little hollow of the very small of her back. But like any reader who thinks he knows better than the author, he merely blocks it from his mind.   
  
And so they go in within the lie and he forgets the anomaly. He refuses to notice the little things that aren't Sydney, until he's in far too deep to notice the web closing in around him.   
  
@@@  
  
And finally he is caught, between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If he shoots, he could very well kill the woman he loves. If he does not, she will kill him.   
  
He shakes his head, tries to wake himself from this dream turned nightmare. Something is wrong, he tells himself. Sydney isn't Sydney...only she is. He's playing a game of cat and mouse, but there are too many mice. Or maybe there are too many cats.   
  
Something cracks the stillness of the warehouse. He follows the sound and discovers her standing over a dead body, gun in hand. He looks at the lifeless form that bears the face of the woman he loves and then back at living Sydney. He raises his gun.   
  
She makes protestations, swears that she is the real Sydney. She keeps her gun on him, shouting at him to put his on the ground. There's only one way this standoff can end, that he knows. One of them will be dead. And so he does the only thing he can; he fires.   
  
His gun clatters to the floor and skitters away as he takes in the scene in front of him. He's not sure which one is the real Sydney, not sure which lifeless form is her, not sure which living woman was her; they've blended together into an abstract.   
  
And so he sinks to the unforgiving concrete floor and gathers her into his arms. He crushes her inert form into his chest as sobs wrack his body. Something of an apology slips from his lips, an atonement, a hope that she is better off where she is, for he is certainly in hell.   
  
@@@  
  
"Does it really matter?"   
  
"Not in any real way."   
  
  
_Trompe L'oeil means 'trick of the eye' or 'to mislead the eye' in French. It is also a term for a style of painting designed to make you think you are seeing something other than a flat wall._  



End file.
